Joy in New Orleans
I haven’t had a Super Bowl Team to root for since the Rams left Los Angeles without a team, but when my daughter moved to New Orleans I started rooting for her Saints. Their victory last night was exactly what the Big Easy needed. And for Drew Brees, watching his son try to catch the falling confetti, it felt just right.
Brees detailed how most of the Saints’ core group of free agents all arrived in 2006, how they talked about rebuilding a city and a team together, how they promised to lean on each other. Brees talked about how the Saints played for more than themselves, playing as well for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region and the Who Dat nation of Saints fans.
As for that other aspect of the Super Bowl, the commercials, I nominate the Audi “Green Nation” ad as the worst (you don’t insult customers who want a green car and then try to sell them one) and the Doritos “House Rules” as the best ad.
Men At Work
This chart shows that the number of working males has dropped back to 1996 levels when there were 30 million less citizens in the U.S. A lot of angry unemployed men in an interregnum is a recipe for social unrest and fascism. Any student of the rise of Hitler to power in 1933 understands that the depression unleashed a huge number of unemployed young and middle-aged German men onto the streets only to be organized by the Nazis. Here’s Eric Hobsbawm from The Age of Extremes
“Fascism was triumphantly anti-liberal. It also provided the proof that man can, without difficulty, combine crack-brained beliefs about the world with a confident mastery of contemporary high technology…. Nevertheless, the combination of conservative values, the techniques of mass democracy, and an innovative ideology of irrationalist savagery, essentially centered in nationalism, must be explained…. Read the rest of this entry »
Question Time
There is a movement afoot to demand that Congress and the President engage in a regular “Question Time”, borrowed from the British Parliamentary system where the Prime Minister takes questions in Parliament from the opposition and his own party.
I think the President was very effective at the House Republican retreat and he should have no fear of holding his own against John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. I think a once a month hour long question time alternating between the House and the Senate would be healthy for our democracy, but I doubt that the Republicans will go for it.
Thoughts?
Three for the Home Team
Our erstwhile correspondent, T Bone Burnett and his colleagues Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal continue their award season hot streak with three Oscar Nominations for Crazy Heart.
This is one of those stories that reaffirms our faith in creativity and learning to make good stories for a price.
Life After Empire
In 1922, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world’s population,and covered more than 13,000,000 square miles: approximately a quarter of the Earth’s total land area. By 1956, after the disastrous attempt to hold on to the Suez Canal, the British finally abandoned the last of their imperial pretensions and settled into rebuilding their own country, culture and spirit. By 1964 the world was sharing in the joy of life after empire.
To read the analysis of David Sanger in the New York Times this morning, life in America for our children will be a pinched, pale shadow of itself.
For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded. Read the rest of this entry »
Strong Recovery?
Here’s why I’m skeptical about the robust Recovery in the fourth quarter GDP. This chart is the Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index for personal consumption and housing. This does not look like a recovery. Now maybe there will be a sudden surge beyond the inventory restocking that made up over half of the GDP gain. And perhaps we could start becoming an export power with the cheap dollar.
But these are big maybes.
We’ll Never Do That Again
The Republican House members invited President Obama to their retreat. The White House suggested that the whole session including the Q & A be on camera. The Repubs agreed. But as Luke Russert tweets from Baltimore.
GOP aides telling me it was a mistake to allow cameras into Obama’s QA with GOP members. Allowed BO to refute GOP for 1.5 hours on TV
Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck could have told them that the Right Wing Noise Machine only works if there is no one in the room to talk back. When was the last time you ever heard a caller argue with Rush on his radio show?
GDP up 5.7%
Brad Delong produces this chart to show that something weird is going on in our economy. Okun’s Law says that if GDP grows, unemployment falls. It ain’t happening. He suggests that productivity could climb to 8% this month. One of two things is happening. Either the great recession has forced employers to cut out layers of middle management fat they never needed (see Ford’s profit announcement) or they are pushing their existing work force to the limits and will soon need to hire a lot more personnel. I tend to believe the former explanation.
If I’m right then we are going to have to rethink “normal levels” of unemployment. We are also going to have to rethink the roll of government assistance to private and public job creation. Yesterday, President Obama released $8 Billion for High Speed rail construction and $2.25 Billion will go towards California’s Anaheim to San Francisco project. That and the news that Obama aimed to double our exports in the next five years proves that he has abandoned the dead ideas of just trying to get back to a 2004 economy.
One thing is clear, I don’t think we are going to return to a world where domestic consumer spending makes up 72% of our GDP. Increasing exports, investment and yes, government spending will be the key to our way out of the interregnum.
